The Best Online Butchers to Get Sustainable Meat Delivered to Your Door

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Do you lament the fact that you don't live near a high-quality butcher? I live in New York City—a place where you can supposedly get toilet paper delivered to home at any hour—and even I find it hard to source quality meat on a regular basis. Call me lazy, but I don't always want to venture to a completely different neighborhood and drag a whole chicken on a crowded subway. You probably don't want to do that either—nor do you want to drive to the opposite side of town.

Here's a rare case where the internet comes in handy. There are a variety of online butchers that will deliver beef, chicken, pork and more to your front door. Because there's a certain amount of quality control required for online meat delivery, I tried a variety of them to determine which ones are worth your time.

How We Tested

I ordered a strip steak and a whole chicken from each of the online butchers below. Note that all of the butchers offer more (turkey! chicken livers! sausage!) but I wanted to try standard cuts of meat that home cooks regularly cook with. I figured if the butchers nailed the basics, they could be trusted with other varieties. Since it was virtually impossible for me to eat 12 whole chickens and 12 steaks by myself and meet my deadline, I enlisted the help of Epicurious staffers to judge the goods. We divided up the various meat products, cooked them at home to our liking, and compared tasting notes—all of which are included below.

Porter Road

Deputy Editor Anya Hoffman tested this steak, but more importantly, so did her highly discerning, steak-loving eight-year-old daughter. They found the beef to be tender and flavorful. Porter Road's strip steak is dry-aged for 14 days, which gives it a deep, savory flavor and a juicy, tender texture. Just one small qualm: the packaging leaked a bit. Meanwhile, Associate Editor Joe Sevier made a low-fuss crispy roast chicken using a whole chicken from Porter Road. He thought the thighs were great—with flavorful, juicy fat deposits—but the breast was a little dry and the chicken was small. Overall though, he found the chicken to be high-quality.

Unlike some of the online butchers that source from one farm, Porter Road works with a variety of small producers around Kentucky and Tennessee, processes their meat at a centralized location in Kentucky, and butchers it in their acclaimed shop in Nashville. The beef is pasture-raised and fed non-GMO feed. Yes, it's not totally grass-fed, but it did have some of the best marbling and flavor of all the steaks we tested.

Crowd Cow

The steak from the unfortunately-named Crowd Cow comes well-marbled and lends itself to a tender, flavorful dinner. The strip steak is sourced from the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York, where the cows are 100-percent grass-fed. They're a species called Murray Greys, which are apparently popular in Australia and New Zealand, but less common in the States. Crowd Cow claims that Murray Greys can grow "big and meaty" on a grass-fed diet. And, I have to say, the beautifully marbled steak I received in the mail proves them correct on this front. The chicken was leaner than some I roasted but still yielded a crispy-skinned, relatively juicy bird that I'd be happy roasting any night of the week.

Fossil Farms

The chicken we roasted from Fossil Farms was fine, though there isn't much information online about how its sourced. The beef, on the other hand, was a little lackluster: It arrived flattened and squished (and in a leaking package). It's pasture-raised but not 100-percent grass-fed. We had some trouble figuring out the pricing online as it seems you can only order beef in large quantities (like a 13-pound beef strip loin for almost $300).

Snake River Farms

Snake River Farms only offers pork and beef, but its New York Strip was tender, flavorful, and well-marbled. I used it to make this weird steak Diane recipe and it yielded tender, flavorful results. The steak is wet, rather than dry-aged, meaning it's sealed with its own juices and left to age in a refrigerator. The website, however, lacks detailed information on the sourcing and treatment of the beef.

Greensbury

Greensbury offers organic meat and wild seafood delivery. The steaks are wet-aged for 21 days, grass-fed, pasture-raised, and sourced from a variety of farms around the country. Epi Digital Director David Tamarkin tried the chicken, which comes from a family farm in the Shenandoah Valley and is fed an all-vegetarian diet free of hormones, antibiotics, and animal byproduct. The meat arrived frozen (many of the others we tried were packed in dry ice), and even after several days in the refrigerator to thaw, it was still frozen. Needless to say, it took a long time to cook. Still, the end result, he assures me, was a delicious roast chicken. This is another very affordable option, especially for organic, grass-fed meat.

White Oak Pastures

This 12-ounce steak was extremely well-marbled, large, and, frankly, beautiful, right out of the package. Even though I didn't age it in my refrigerator for 21 days as the website directed—it was bursting with lots of dry-aged, umami flavor and it was super juicy and tender after I cooked it to medium-rare. White Oak Pastures is in Southwest Georgia, where they claim the climate is optimal for pasture-raised cattle. Indeed, this steak has the kind of flavor and marbling I usually associate with grain-fed beef.

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Joe—already a longtime fan of White Oak Pastures—tried the chicken with this recipe and found it tender, juicy, and generally perfect, if a little small. This is something the butcher owns up to: "[Our chickens] are lean, but they are full of flavor." They recommend more moisture and a shorter cooking time as the best way to handle lean animals.

Grass Roots Farmer's Coop

The grass-fed strip steak from Grass Roots Farmer's Coop was tender and flavorful. It was slightly less marbled and smaller than its White Oak Farms counterpart, weighing about 8 ounces, but still delicious when seasoned with salt and pepper and seared simply in a cast-iron skillet with butter. The steaks are sourced from small family farms, dry-aged, and hormone-, additive-, and antibiotic-free. The chicken is air-chilled, free-range, and antibiotic free, and yielded a tender, juicy roast chicken dinner.